- What did it look like?

- Nothing. Frowning, she turned her head and scanned the embankment carefully. People walked as if nothing had happened, the sea was still lazily sorting through the pebbles ...

- Did I scare you? the young man asked again. He clearly had no intention of leaving her alone.

“Yes…or rather, no,” she corrected herself quickly. - Thanks for the bag.

You are alone today for the first time. I saw you from the pier and didn't even believe it at first.

- How do you know me? – Peering into an unfamiliar face, Leah threw the belt over his shoulder. She felt uncomfortable.

“I sang with your brother for many years.” His voice trembled slightly. Tall and rather swarthy, with black, slightly curly hair and dark brown eyes, the young man looked only a little older than her. “Christian knows me and my mother: she is the regent. After a pause, he smiled slightly. “I think it would be best if I walk you home.”

Leah nodded in agreement. Christian really used to sing in the church choir: unlike Karl, he had a beautiful baritone voice and a very sensitive ear.

“Okay, see you through,” she breathed, relaxing, and, bypassing him, quickly headed up the road.

- Where are you in such a hurry?

Hearing a smile in the hail, Leah turned around:

I should have been home half an hour ago.

The smile on the young man's face immediately faded.

- I didn't introduce myself. - Having caught up, he went with her in step. - My name is Mark. Mark Hamali.

Taking a little to the side, Leah looked away and said nothing. She did not know what to answer: it was unusual to talk to a stranger, although his openness and disposed to trust.

“I would be grateful if you would not tell Christian where you met me,” she asked after a while.

"Okay," Mark said readily. - I didn't mean to.

For a while they walked side by side in complete silence. Leah finally calmed down. She gave everything in training completely, without a trace, and a short run was the last straw. The only thing I wanted now was to lie down and sleep until the morning, until the phone in the kitchen rang. Carl promised to let me know as soon as he got to the farm. While he was on the road, Leah felt uneasy.

“Come back, just come back,” she mentally repeated again, like a spell, involuntarily clenching her fists. In their short goodbye in the morning, her brother kept looking away, not wanting her to notice his unease and a strange, uncharacteristic uncertainty.

"...I just couldn't find a good excuse to approach," Mark explained without looking in her direction. “They don’t leave you alone for a minute.

Realizing that she had listened to half of what he said, Leah smiled guiltily.

“Yes, it is,” she agreed, not knowing what else to say. Mark was not the first to be surprised by her brothers' guardianship.

In the meantime, they had already reached the gate, and the young man slowed his pace a little, letting her go ahead.

“That's why I've been watching you for a few days, I wanted to know where you live,” he admitted. “I thought maybe I could seize the moment and talk to you.

- Don't do that again. Stopping, she looked at him curiously. Carl is away for now, but I'm sure he wouldn't like it. If you want to talk, just come and that's it. Especially since Christian knows who you are, so he won't mind. And thanks for coming, I...

A knock cut her off in mid-sentence. Slamming against the jamb, the door creaked plaintively.

– Leah! Christian's voice sounded so angry that Mark turned visibly pale.

“Mr. Vallor seemed to be keeping track of time,” he remarked quietly, and before she could repeat her request, he added, “I'll explain everything to him myself.”

Leah wasn't listening. She straightened her back tensely and looked defiantly at her brother.

– What are you doing?! - Throwing open the gate, Christian stumbled and, knitting his eyebrows, looked at Mark incredulously. – Hamali?

Smiling calmly, Mark held out his hand to him.

"Sorry, we're a little late," he said. - This is entirely my fault - they started talking.

Raising an eyebrow, the brother gave Leah a mockingly surprised look and, stepping back, motioned for her to go to the house.

“Karl asked me to keep an eye on you,” he quietly took her by the elbow and whispered into her ear. - You were gone for an hour, the driver did not wait. Another couple of minutes, and I would have brought the police to their feet. Think what you're doing!

- Sorry. Withdrawing her hand, she ran up the steps to the door and, overtaking Mark, went inside. I didn't want to make excuses, everything was clear. - Here you are. Quickly taking out a notepad from her bag, Leah wrote down the phone number and held out the torn piece of paper, showing the young man with a glance that it was better for him to leave.

“Thank you,” he answered without a shadow of a smile, and, looking into her eyes seriously and with some sadness, he hid the note in his pocket. - I think I will go…

Leah silently nodded and, without saying goodbye, went to her room, throwing off her wet sandals as she went. The tension that had accumulated over the past few days needed to be released. In her measured and understandable life, something went wrong. Without Karl, the world around him seemed hostile, and from Christian's inept care it only became harder: resembling his brother's face, he remained alien and incomprehensible. Karl somehow related them, united them, but when he was not there, all the threads between them seemed to burn out and crumble into ashes.

“Shush,” shouting at the dirty-red cat curled up in the headboard, Leah pulled the coverlet angrily. - Go away, Bama.

Lazily stretching, the cat jumped to the floor and immediately lay down again, curled up in a disheveled ball on the white rug.

Crawling under the thin blanket, Leah pressed her face into the lavender-smelling pillow and began to cry out loud.

* * *

Paul Anders, a distant descendant of the Missar family who had succeeded his late father as Guardian of the Downward East Path a few years ago, met Karl at the airport. In the years that they had not seen each other, he swelled noticeably in both shoulders and waist and became like a typical American farmer, which, in fact, he was. His simple, rough face, which had already lost the features of the ancestors who arrived from the Small World in the wild lands of America, was dotted with small pockmarks and, despite the duty smile, expressed extreme anxiety.

“Does your guest know where you went?” - sitting in the Land Rover, said Carl, buckling up.

“I think so,” said Paul readily. “At least if everything you warned about is true and he could actually read my mind. Frankly, the news of your existence surprised him greatly. Are you sure that the Order should have opened up right now?

Carl shrugged. He did not want to go into details and tell Paul the rules of the game, which began more than two thousand years ago. Yes, he wouldn't understand. The role of the Guardians was to meet travelers and help them in the Big World in any way they could. Politics did not concern them.

The long road gave me time to think again and weigh all the pros and cons. Asking Paul for a notepad and pen, Carl quickly jotted down a couple of instructions and, ripping out the written sheets, neatly and carefully stacked them in a pile. Two notes were intended for Christian and were written rather for inner peace. Karl understood that if he made a mistake, the twin alone would not be able to fulfill his father's order. The most that the brother was capable of without outside help was to delay the death of Leah and his own for another couple of years, until the next Path.

The rest of the instructions were to be read by Paul—later, when it was time to make a decision. So far, any request could become known to the Initiate: some adherents of the Order were able to penetrate the mind and memories. Fortunately, my father managed to explain the basic principles of resistance in due time. Karl was only six, but he grasped everything on the fly and remembered a lot, and what he could not repeat right away, he learned from the notes left by his father.

“Here,” he said casually, handing the papers to the Keeper. After a long silence, his voice sounded hoarse and cracked.

- What? - Paul turned his head and asked in surprise: - Why?

“You asked for fertilizer advice, didn’t you?” Carl smiled softly. – I have sketched several options. I think you can figure out the proportions yourself. See how the time will be, only after we finish the job.

Whether the Guardian understood or not, a barely noticeable shadow glided across his face, and his gaze became heavy. Taking the notes, he quickly tucked them into the breast pocket of his red and yellow plaid shirt and focused again on the endless dark gray road. Only half an hour was left before the farm.

“I don’t know if this is important, but the guest constantly asked me about some girl, allegedly Lirdan’s daughter,” Paul drawled, uncertainly, glancing sideways at Karl. - I didn’t know that he had a daughter ... Actually, that’s what I told him.

“I hear it for the first time,” Carl shrugged indifferently. As he expected, the envoy of the Order did not fail to study the memory of the Guardian - a danger that Karl was able to foresee fourteen years ago, when he had just found little Leah on the threshold of his house. Thank God, on that day, old Anders left with his son and did not see the abandoned baby, and Aunt Liz, heeding Karl's request, immediately took them to her friend in Houston - she was afraid to return to Greece, as unrest was brewing in the country. They did not visit the Anders farm anymore, and four years later, immediately after the plane crash near Athens, they returned home. Perhaps the old Keeper was offended by the sons of Lirdan, but Aunt Fox said that she was too weak in health to accompany the boys on such a long journey. It was a safe and win-win option.